Learning to Weave

In the past year or so, I’ve seen woven wall hangings everywhere! And while I’ve admired them, the price tags are usually far beyond my budget. And so, while I’ve wanted to give weaving a try myself, I’ve procrastinated starting one because I really just didn’t know where to start.

I’d looked for lap looms at places like JoAnn’s and Hobby Lobby and finally found some available on Amazon, but I really didn’t want to spend $40+ on a loom when I wasn’t even sure I was going to enjoy weaving.

And then, one night last week I just could not get weaving out of my head. I had to make one and I had to make one right that minute! I decided to try calling my local yarn shop to see if they had any lap looms, and they did, for only $108…

Um, yeah, no thanks!

And so, I set forth to build my own little lap loom after finding this handy tutorial from A Beautiful Mess. Now the reason I’m posting this, isn’t to give you some beautiful tutorial on how to build your own loom or even how to weave, as I’m still learning and far from an expert from the subject, there are a lot of tutorials out there if you want to know more about weaving. I’m posting this because I want you to know that you really don’t need anything special to get started. It’s easy to get overwhelmed looking at all the loom packages with all the different tools that you have know idea what they are used for (or at least it was easy for me to get overwhelmed by that). And so, if you are in the same boat as me, and just want to try it out without investing too much financially, then this post is for you on how I finally just went for it using things I already had around the house and that no fancy looms or tools are necessary.

First, I headed to the garage and found a piece of scrap wood and some nails. This piece of wood measures around 5″x7″, you can kind of see it in this picture, the right side is a very crooked cut, but it still worked. An old wood frame would be perfect too! Since my loom is so small, it really wasn’t a big deal, but if I were to have made a larger loom, passing the needle between the warp strands in the middle would have gotten difficult if you are not able to access the back of your piece.

Here are the details on the nails I used.

Measure a straight line on the top and bottom of your board, it is really important that you line is straight so your weaving isn’t crooked, so if your wood piece isn’t square, be extra careful with your measurements. Also, the tutorial suggests making your marks 1/2″ apart, please listen to that and don’t do what I did. I thought that since my loom was so small that I would need to add more warp lines, that was absolutely not the case. As soon as I started nailing in my nails, I realized 1/4″ was just too close and instead pulled them out so they were 1/2″ apart.

Here is my very crude, finished loom and while it definitely is not very pretty, it worked perfectly and I am very happy that I was able to do it all for free.

If you follow along on Instagram, you saw this picture last week when I was partially done with my first weaving. I just used yarn I already had on hand and 2″ yarn needle.

To finish it off, I found a stick in my backyard, cleaned it and trimmed it down to size.

I also trimmed the bottom fringe into a “V” to accentuate the angles in my diamonds.

And voila!

My first weaving is done! It’s certainly not perfect, you can see my sides are a little wobbly from times I pulled my yarn to tight, but its still earning a place on my gallery wall! I can’t wait to try another one, I’d like to get some chunkier yarn to add a bit more texture and now that I know I really enjoy weaving, I’d also like to make a larger loom, I’ll probably hit up Home Depot’s scrap wood bin to see if I can find anything that will work without having to spend too much.

If weaving is something you’ve been wanting to try, I hope this post has inspired you to give it a go! After just one attempt, I’m hooked, and I’m sure you will be too!